Thursday, May 20, 2010

At Work on an E-Book

As if I wasn't already doing a great job of NOT getting projects completed, I've taken on another: An e-book. About what? What else. Shooting glamour.

Actually, this project is helping with my other projects. How so? Because the e-book is quickly becoming a great template for the design of potential workshops as well the linear structure of the (still to be finished) DVD.

Aside from time management, plus Murphy's Law being my continual and regular nemesis, organizational skills and developing a cohesive structure to my projects are things I don't exactly excel at. None of this is news to me. But I'm happy to say the book is forcing me to deal with some of these things. Leastwise, the organizational and structural parts.

I began writing, thinking the finished product would be 20 or 30 pages. It's already looking like it will be a fair amount more than that. It's not that I'm trying to write a glam-shooting version of "War and Peace," it's simply that, with every subject I explore and write about, there seems to be more material, ideas, and other things that should be covered and dealt with.

The general thrust of the e-book is sharing ideas, techniques, approaches, and skills that, coupled with the reader's own creativity, imagination, and determination, will help make them the fierce, adaptable, courageous, cunning, kick-ass, roll-with-the punches, pretty girl shooters they want to be. Shooters who know how to get in, get out and, most importantly, get the shot!

While this e-book isn't meant to be a "gear" book, I have about a dozen pages dedicated to equipment. Even so, the gear section is more about being a minimalist when it comes to what photographers need to capture great images of hot models. In other words, how to make do with less yet make it look like more. Guerrilla photography, if you will. I came to the conclusion, quite some time ago, that even with the best equipment money can buy--and plenty of it--you can still shoot pictures that mostly suck. I should also mention that this e-book is focused on production, not post-processing. Get it right in the camera and let post-prod enhance your images, not be the greater share of their creation.

I've been working on the e-book for a week or so, quite diligently in fact, putting in lots of hours. It will be released as an Adobe PDF file. I'm hoping to have it completed in June and ready to go. Of course, then I'll have to set up a small site to host it and do those sorts of things. Wish me luck.

The pretty girl portrait at the top is Cytherea. I went with a darker, low-key lighting approach to this image, with my mainlight low and off to the side.

Thanks for asking, Stephen! Was going to price at $14.95 but I'm going to start it out at a discounted price of $9.95 purchased via my blog. Should stay at that price for at least 30 days. It will be about 60 pages ( + or - ) and I already have 50 pages complete. Will be adding more pics and lighting diagrams, plus table of contents and that sorta stuff. by the weekend, I'll probly post an overview of its contents. I've already shown some chapters to a few peeps and I'm getting a really great response.